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At only nineteen years old, Billie Eilish has already won all four major Grammy awards: Best New Artist; Record of the Year; Song of the Year; and Album of the Year— all in 2020. She is the first and only artist born during the twenty-first century who has had a number one album and a number one song, and has become a household name over the course of her rapid rise in popularity.
Eilish made her first appearance in the music world when she was thirteen years old and her older brother, Finneas O’Connell, asked her to sing a song he wrote for his band, titled “Ocean Eyes.” When they uploaded the song to SoundCloud, Eilish and O’Connell were met with soaring support as plays of the songs increased and listeners became more interested in the mysterious young singer behind the melody. By the time she was fourteen, Eilish was signed to a record label and had begun working on her image as an emerging artist.
From the very beginning of her career, Eilish has stayed true to how she wants to present herself and her work. Although her earlier creations such as “Ocean Eyes” and her debut EP “Don't Smile at Me” could be considered fitting of the pop genre archetype, Eilish has always demonstrated her difference from other young pop stars. Her soft voice contrasts with the dark themes of her lyrics, including murder, monsters, and abuse of authority. Unlike other young public figures, Eilish does not attempt to dilute her personality to gain the acceptance of her listeners. In interviews and other press events, she carries and expresses herself in an incredibly refreshing, unapologetically truthful, and clear-sighted way. She does not censor her facial expressions or her speech; she says what she means— and she means what she says.
Billie Eilish is the antithesis of the stereotypical teenage pop star. Her distinctive, brightly colored hair, baggy, “boyish” clothing and low, raspy speaking voice are in direct opposition to how young women are expected to present themselves to the world— a deliberate, controversial subversion from the ultra-feminine, passive, stereotypical paragon that has been ingrained into womanhood for centuries. Her rejection of these expectations establishes her as a role model for other young women and girls, who make up her main demographic of fans.
However, Eilish’s confidence and refusal to conform to societal expectations do not make her immune to the harsh criticism that comes with being a young woman, nevermind being a young woman in the public eye.
Eilish has stated that she wears oversized clothing in public to avoid judgment based on her physique. In a 2019 advertisement for Calvin Klein’s #MyTruth campaign, she says “I never want the world to know everything about me...nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.”
She has also struggled with her body image. “I only started wearing baggy clothes because of my body,” Eilish says in a 2021 interview with Vanity Fair. “I thought that I would be the only one dealing with my hatred for my body, but I guess the internet also hates my body.”
Also in this interview, Eilish describes the methods in which she attempted to cope with the way she felt about her body. She recounts being twelve years old and resorting to methods of self-harm— starving herself, taking weight loss pills, and cutting herself. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 35-57% of adolescent girls participate in crash dieting, fasting, self-induced vomiting, diet pills, or ingesting laxatives. Forty-two percent of girls in first, second, and third grade want to be thinner.
The pressure that young women feel to be skinnier in order to gain societal approval is starting at an increasingly young age, steering them to think that their bodies aren’t worthy if they’re bigger than a size two. This is reinforced when men are taught that women’s bodies are for them to judge, and female public figures are subject to their critique. Eilish’s clothing style serves as an act of rebellion against the standards that have been set for what young women and pop stars should look like, but it also serves as protection against a patriarchal society that feels entitled to see and criticize women’s bodies. The way she dresses is both inspiring in its detachment from the norm and is telling of the lengths women go to for the sake of for their bodies to not be the subject of scrutiny or decided to be the determinant of their worth.
There have been a few times in which Billie Eilish has gone outside in clothing that could be considered less modest than the clothing she wears at concerts, award shows, and other public events; the media has noticed the differentiation and has reacted accordingly. In October of 2020, when she was eighteen, paparazzi photos of Eilish wearing a tank top and shorts surfaced and went viral. The questionable responses varied from people hailing her for being “brave enough” to exist in her body, towards the other end of the spectrum (with explicitly cruel responses usually from adult men hiding behind their Twitter profile), one from a twenty-nine-year-old man, reading: “in 10 months Billie Eilish has developed a mid-30s wine mom body.”
Eilish is also known for her vivid hair colors. Most recently, she switched from jet black hair with neon green roots to blonde. This was received as immense news by some of her fans, many of whom speculated that she wore a wig at the 2021 Grammy Awards. The announcement of Eilish’s new hairstyle was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions, with her Instagram post declaring the change getting a record-breaking one-million likes in just six minutes. While the response to her hair could be attributed to her impression on her young audience, it—like the preoccupation with Eilish’s attire and body— is also a testament to just how obsessed society is with the way women present themselves and the lengths women go to contain the public’s responses to their appearances.
The number of articles and social media posts that have been created in response to Eilish’s body and changes in appearance rival the number of articles and social media posts that responded to her music. Photographs of her in tighter-fitting clothing trend on Twitter just as much as news of her record-breaking achievements in the music industry. Pop culture only feeds into the correlation between societal appreciation of work and the attractiveness of the worker herself- therefore it is unsurprising when appearance becomes of utmost importance to female celebrities in order to succeed. In a society that always finds a way to criticize the way that women dress, act, or dye their hair, there is no way to win. Billie Eilish is admonished online for the ways in which her clothing and music style differ from the norm, while other women such as Madison Beer and Taylor Swift are bashed for their presentations that fit the "women-in-pop" stereotype. There is enormous pressure to be the “right” kind of woman; even when you fit this practically unattainable standard, you are attacked for not being unique or "edgy" enough.
Billie Eilish set the boundaries that she did to prevent the public from commenting on her hair, her body, and her clothing—all things that are arbitrary when it comes to her music—and to maintain the focus on her work rather than the way that she looks. However, in our society, women are valued first for their demeanor, and second for everything else, including their contributions to male-dominated industries. Eilish’s efforts to escape being seen for her music instead of the way that she presents herself publicly and the consequences of when they fail to protect her are a symptom of this problem.